


Countdown

by dory_1897



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, But essentially Cassandra dealing with everything she's been through, Healing, Implied Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, More tags added as I learn the etiquette, Other, Past Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 21:21:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17495594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dory_1897/pseuds/dory_1897
Summary: Ten months after the fall of Vecna, Cassandra de Rolo dropped a bowl onto the Castle Whitestone floor.





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

> This is in part based on Matt's epilogue for Cassandra.

Ten months after the fall of Vecna, Cassandra de Rolo dropped a bowl onto the Castle Whitestone floor. It shattered, and she barely noticed, her focus entirely on an unfamiliar auburn-haired woman sitting across the dining room table from Vex’ahlia. Her vision narrowed and the sound of her heartbeat rose in her ears as she backed into the hallway, leaning against the wall as soon as they were out of sight. It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. She tried to focus on breathing, on the stone beneath her, anything. But all she could see in her mind’s eye was that woman’s head and Delilah’s eyes.

Percy found her there nine minutes later, shaking and tears streaming down her face. He sat with her until she calmed, but when he asked what had happened, she shook her head, stood, and walked to her room. She stayed there until the Syngornean ambassador finished her meetings with Vex and returned to her own city. She didn’t tell anyone what had been going through her mind. The Briarwoods didn’t matter anymore. She had to put them out of her mind. A brave face was put on, a joke about too much work and clumsy youth was made, and she pushed everyone’s concerns away.

Eight weeks after the incident had begun to fade from everyone’s memory, Vex and Percy announced their pregnancy. While everyone crowded around them and discussed the future in excitement, Cassandra stood to the side, her mind racing. Full of memories of parents and children hanging from the Sun Tree, of people she had met, people she had sent to that death. Full of the story of Velora Vessar caught in the chest of a new god. She silently left the room and ordered heavier curtains for her bedroom windows. No one thought to question it, nor her gift of the child’s lost aunts and uncle's names stamped into tiny, infant-sized bangles.

Seven days before anyone began to notice, she began to spend sleepless nights in the Ziggurat. The quiet nights left her head full of her own words, a different voice for every misdeed done with intention and without. The smothering embrace of every trust given to her, even when she had pushed off the mantle time and again. She stared at the sphere, counted the roots peeking through the cavern’s ceiling, waited for the absence of magic to leech into her mind and empty it, too.

The Pale Guard said she had been walking in the snow for six hours. She glared at her brother as he paced before her, his voice risen in tandem frustration and concern. Speaking of responsibility and safety while his wife wandered the woods with her wolf and bear, while he still carried the stuff of nightmares as self-defense. “You left me here, you allowed me to make the decisions. This is my choice. If you take issue with my choices, brother, perhaps you should have stayed here and ruled. We both know I am less than suited.” Cassandra, full of venom burning herself from the inside, her frame soaked and freezing, Percy finally paused with realized terror painting his face whiter than their shared hair.

Five minutes of complete silence following the request for her to dedicate the temple, before a quiet declination. The eyes on her almost seeming wounded, but the time out of the spotlight suited her too much for her to care. She was beginning to sleep again, and on nights when she couldn’t, the siphon no longer called for her company. There was talk of her staying over in Vesrah for a while in the near future. She could walk through the square without flinching. But a little more time rebuilding herself before she went back on display would only help.

Less than four weeks after the birth of the twins, Vex was already training her. They hunted, made notes of security concerns. At the spot where she had lost everything all those years ago, Cassandra paused in her tracks. The sense memory of an arrow flashed through her chest. She inhaled, exhaled, kept walking, and once they finished their rounds, talked about it with Percy for the first time.

Three days before the anniversary of her death, the world prepared to celebrate the fall of Vecna. She and her family prepared the Raven Queen’s small temple, the metal circlet she’d been wearing when she was revived placed on the altar with Vox Machina’s other memories. She spoke to Whitestone for the first time in a long time, thanked them for trusting her when she didn’t trust herself. And she smiled. It lifted her eyes, the dark shade of loss fading from them for the first time since the population had known her as their youngest daughter.

Two months out of every year, she traveled. A new city every time. On every journey, Cassandra sought out specific souvenirs. A native feather, a gear, a useless key, a rough-cut gem. No one knew who she was on these trips, her formal guard not needed when she could defend herself better than any of them could imagine.

One day, many years after the youngest of her nieces and nephews had grown up, she took the bangles she’d had made for their baby gifts and melted them down. _Vax’ildan, Julius, Vesper, Oliver, Whitney, Ludwig_ , their names became a hanging windchime, some errant ceramic shards clinking against them in her window looking over the Sun Tree. Their being gone made no sense, maybe, but look what she still had, even without them.

Time went on, but Cassandra stopped counting down towards her self-imposed finality.

**Author's Note:**

> I really love Cass and she's okay now that I've written this, right?
> 
> I might come back to this one day in the future to make it longer, but that would be an intense restyling, so who knows.
> 
> Comments are appreciated!


End file.
